Roar power: And that’s why you have to love soccer as Brisbane defeats Western Sydney Wanderers in the A-League Grand Final

IT’S A FIFA World Cup year and from early June onwards, we’ll all be temporary soccer fans for a few weeks or so.

But this game is growing. This game slowly, surely, is taking a stranglehold on the Australian psyche. This game is attracting a new legion of full-time fans – of devotees, diehards and disciples – and there’s no better evidence for why than the thrilling A-League grand final.

News_Image_File: Besart Berisha of the Roar celebrates victory after the 2014 A-League Grand Final match between the Brisbane Roar and the Western Sydney Wanderers at Suncorp Stadium. Picture: Getty Images

Like many Australians, this reporter would rather watch a game of NRL or AFL or America’s NFL than a game of soccer. But this thing is growing on me. You watch a match like Sunday’s A-League grand final and you get the sport. You just get it. You might not understand the nuances but you understand the flow, the excitement, the heartbreak, the joy.

The story of this match is a simple one. The first half was a little flat. It was one of those deciders you see in any code where both teams were tentative. Both, it seemed, were more afraid to lose than bold and daring enough to try something that might win the game.

The second half was like walking out of a tame rom-com film and into a movie theatre showing The Fast and the Furious. It was as though both teams had shed a defender each. Where once there were clusters of players, now there were open spaces. Chances came thick and fast and it was the Wanderers who struck first.

Shinji Ono’s curling cross was wicked. Normally these things curl in towards the post but the Japanese sensation’s cross swung late away from the defender at the near post, right onto the head of defender Matthew Spiranovic, whose header, you’d have to say, was worthy of Tim Cahill. The timing was just perfect.

But the Roar struck back. They left it late, but you sensed they’d come. This is what made the game so great. Even to a soccer non-convert, you could smell the contest was not done with. Follow sport long enough and no matter what the code, you can sense momentum shifting in the same way shorter daylight hours herald a change in seasons.

The Roar struck, and who else but Besart Berisha, the Albanian with the hot temper and the even hotter nose for goal. Minutes earlier, Wanderers coach Tony Popovic had subbed Shinji Ono out of the game. It was a calculated gamble. Defenders, not attackers, were needed with nine minutes to go. But the Wanderers never looked the same without the departing genius who has become the emblem of this multicultural, deeply passionate club.

The first period of extra-time came and went. Then in the second period, the Roar struck. Again, you could smell it coming. As they had done in the grand final two years earlier, the Roar turned a 0-1 deficit into a 2-1 win in extra-time. Like a good racehorse, they time their run. They just seem to know where the winning post is.

News_Rich_Media: Brisbane Roar become the A-League's most successful club with a third Championship win as they hosted Western Sydney Wanderers at Suncorp Stadium in the 2013/14 Grand Final

The Roar now has a huge claim to being Australia’s best contemporary sporting team, having won three of the last four A-League titles. Don’t forget that in that period they also set an Australian record 36-game unbeaten streak. Also, they won this year’s minor premiership by a massive 10 points. This is some team. Their title was deserved.

As for the Wanderers, well, if you won awards for having the best fans and the best community engagement and the most likeable coach, you’d give them three Nobel Prizes and a dozen Oscars. But for now, the club which has revolutionised the Sydney sporting scene in just two seasons must be content with being runners-up again.

News_Image_File: Jerome Polenz of the Wanderers looks dejected after the Wanderers were defeated by the Roar in extra time during the 2014 A-League Grand Final match between the Brisbane Roar and the Western Sydney Wanderers at Suncorp Stadium. Picture: Getty Images

Soccer, however, will not be content with being runner-up.

Dominant in so many countries around the globe, it is desperate to crack the Australian mainstream, to be a sport people talk about not just on big occasions like this, and on the even bigger days coming in June, but all the time.

This reporter doesn’t promise he’ll pay a whole bunch of attention later this year when the A-League kicks off again. But every year, people like me watch a little more closely, care a little more, check an extra ladder before we put down the sports pages.

Interestingly, when I covered the A-League Sydney derby earlier this season sitting among the Wanderers supporters, I noted how many of them had no ethnic or family links to the game. They’d just joined the throng because they felt part of something. That, ultimately, is what a gripping grand final like this will help do. Anyone who watched it will surely want another taste.

Whether you’re a born-and-bred soccer fan or a once-a-year watcher, you’ve got to be a bit more passionate about the sport of soccer after a match like this, don’t you?

Well played to both teams. And well played Football Federation Australia for allowing it to happen on this scale.